Which films have you seen lately? Vol. 21: Now in CinemaScope!

[Smellincoffee]

The Babe, 1992. John Goodman plays Babe Ruth as a bit of a manchild -- who loves playing baseball, who fantasizes about growing up and becoming a manager, who loves having a good time with his friends -- eating, drinking, flirting with 'dames'. The movie doesn't shy away from his excess and hedonism, though they do depict his bringing home an adopted daughter to his first wife as him simply deciding "You want a baby? Here's a baby! " instead of him having a child with another woman, then having his wife raise her. Thoroughly fun movie on the whole.

Cobb, 1995. I was torn about watching this: I knew from the outset that it's based on a thoroughly discredited biography from a hack 'journalist' who was known for fabricating facts, but Tommy Lee Jones is a favorite actor so I gave Amazon my $3 and let it ride. I'm glad I did: TLJ is hilarious in his intense and manic interpretation of Ty Cobb, and the story of the movie isn't bad, either. When I go to Georgia in April to see a Morgan Wade concert, I'm going to take a day to drive up to the Cobb museum.

 

[Kyriakos]

From Leave the World Behind.

Seriously?
This is like the Happening, but with orders of magnitude more glaring advertising.

 

[EvaDK]

Egon's Top 10 6 Time-Loop Movies:

1. Palm Springs (2020)
2. Edge of Tomorrow (2014) - just watched this one again
3. Groundhog Day (1993) - not the original time-loop story*, but the one that made it a thing
4. Lola Rennt / Run Lola Run (1998)
5. Source Code (2011)
6. The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021)

Okay, it turns I don't have a Top 10 in this particular subgenre. I guess I should make it a Top 5, but I wanted to mention The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, 'cause I liked it and nobody I ever mention it to has even heard of it.

Well, here's a couple more lesser knowns for your list, that you might not be familiar with:

The Jacket
Timecrimes
Predestination
The Butterfly Effect
Coherence

 

[EgonSpengler]

Well, here's a couple more lesser knowns for your list, that you might not be familiar with:

The Jacket
Timecrimes
Predestination
The Butterfly Effect
Coherence

I've seen The Butterfly Effect. I remember thinking it was unsatisfying, but I don't remember why. It's been a long time since I've seen it, though. Haven't seen any of the others. Will look them up.

 

[Kyriakos]

Anatomy of a Fall (french movie).
Meh.

 

[Clubber Lang]

Coppola goes mega -

Throughout his career, the legendary Francis Ford Coppola has made many a masterpiece. The Godfather and its sequel. Apocalypse Now. The Conversation. His place in the cinematic pantheon is secure. But at the age of 84, he’s not resting on his laurels. He’s finally made his long-held passion project Megalopolis – a science-fiction epic he originally started writing back in the ‘80s, and which has rumbled around in his consciousness ever since. And he’s reportedly put $120 million of his own money into making it, an independent film on a gigantic scale with a sprawling cast to boot. It’s hard to believe that the film is actually real at this point – but it’s reportedly hitting our screens later in 2024, and Coppola has shared a tantalising teaser image on his Instagram:
Even from a single image, there’s plenty to look at here – a sense of crumbling empires, though a setting that reads as contemporary New York; the eeriness of those abandoned apartments and broken doors; that ominous broken statue; the grandiosity (and sci-fi leanings) of that title treatment. Consider us almightily intrigued. The film stars Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Talia Shire, and Kathryn Hunter, to name but a fraction of the cast. And it’s both written and directed by Coppola himself.
Stay tuned for more imagery on the film as it moves through post-production – and, fingers crossed, we may see the full thing before the year is through. Here’s hoping it proves
worth the wait
.

 

[Kyriakos]

Sounds potentially interesting. Although the image might as well had been made by a random web artist.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Bushwick (2017) was a fun little indie action-thriller. Super-low budget, but it was maybe more admirable for that. I just rewatched Gareth Edwards' Monsters (2010) not too long ago, and this reminded me of that, in terms of its evident tiny budget and tight focus on a couple of people within a much larger event, but not being about the big event, per se. This could maybe be a kind of prelude to Alex Garland's Civil War in a couple months. This could also be a companion piece to another recent movie that I can't name, because that would constitute a spoiler. Bushwick would be what's going on over across the river, in that scene with the things and the stuff happening.

There were several long 'one-take' shots that I thought were very effective. (Most one-take shots these days aren't actually one take. There's a vid on YouTube with John Krasinki giving away some of the tricks he used for the 'oner' at the beginning of A Quiet Place, Part II if you're curious how those work.)

The script had some real clunkers, and some of the acting wasn't up to the job, although Brittany Snow and Dave Bautista had to be big gets for this writer-director duo, in a Moneyball kind of way: She's a B-grade actor and a C movie star; he's a B movie star and a C actor. There was one particularly painful scene where Bautista had to deliver a too-long exposition monologue. The script didn't really do him any favors, but he just didn't have the chops. During his monologue I was watching Snow, who had to just sit there looking sympathetic, and I was thinking, "she must be in Hell right now." Conversely, Bautista was obviously in his element during the fight scenes. In that sense, I suppose Snow had it easier, because her character wasn't supposed to know how to fight, and when she did get into a tussle, it was probably a stunt-double.

Good, judicious use of SFX. Many scenes feature the duo just running for their lives, and the camera stays tight on them, ducking and startling and moving from cover to cover, and a lot of the violence going on around them is off-screen. I bet a lot of those scenes were just the actors reacting to nothing, and then the audio effects were added in post. Then the filmmakers could save their budget for the "money shots" later in the movie.

Maybe the best part of the movie was Aesop Rock's score.

---

From Leave the World Behind.

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Seriously?
This is like the Happening, but with orders of magnitude more glaring advertising.

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I thought this was light-years better than The Happening. I thought the bit with the Teslas was sort of clever, although you're right, the product placement wasn't subtle. And I didn't understand the bit with the deer; it seemed like it was in the wrong movie.

 

[Kyriakos]

Maybe they very rapidly decided to change the ending. Certainly looks that way with how little time was given to it

 

[Birdjaguar]

Stone Age horror.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Black Orpheus, 1959. A woman fleeing a man trying to murder her arrives in Rio during Carnival and falls in love with a bus driver/guitar player who tries to protect her, but is being dogged by his psychotic fiance at the same time. The story is based on a Greek tragedy, so you can guess how it ends. Constant, constant dancing.

 

[Kyriakos]

The great Eddie Murphy ^^

 

[Quintillus]

Kingdom of Heaven, 2005. A fragile peace between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Saladin breaks down, leading to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem. As the film's outro reminds us, nearly a thousand years later, peace in the area remains elusive.

Pretty good. It certainly shows Saladin's reputation of being an honorable fighter and leader, and the tensions between belief in victory by divine favor, and belief that one must be prepared for God to be willing to intervene for them. There are chivalrous ideals in some characters, a pure focus on power by others, and enough court dynamics that it's surprising that Nikolai Coster-Waldau didn't have a bigger part in them. And battle scenes that, while perhaps a bit heavy on fire as Hollywood battle scenes tend to be, are nonetheless satisfying.

 

[Arakhor]

It's not particularly accurate historically, but then of course it isn't. It's by Ridley Scott, after all.

 

[Kyriakos]

It's not particularly accurate historically, but then of course it isn't. It's by Ridley Scott, after all.

You think you are so great because you have boats?

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Kingdom of Heaven, 2005. A fragile peace between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Saladin breaks down, leading to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem. As the film's outro reminds us, nearly a thousand years later, peace in the area remains elusive.

Pretty good. It certainly shows Saladin's reputation of being an honorable fighter and leader, and the tensions between belief in victory by divine favor, and belief that one must be prepared for God to be willing to intervene for them. There are chivalrous ideals in some characters, a pure focus on power by others, and enough court dynamics that it's surprising that Nikolai Coster-Waldau didn't have a bigger part in them. And battle scenes that, while perhaps a bit heavy on fire as Hollywood battle scenes tend to be, are nonetheless satisfying.

Theatrical or Director's Cut?

 

[lymond]

Theatrical or Director's Cut?

good question....KoH is one of my favorite movies but the Director's Cut made it even better

 

[Quintillus]

Theatrical or Director's Cut?

Theatrical. Included with the streaming subscription I already had. Would consider re-watching the Director's.

 

[lymond]

Theatrical. Included with the streaming subscription I already had. Would consider re-watching the Director's.

Did you figure out who played King Baldwin?

 

[Kyriakos]

Does it at least feature the Byzantine Empire?
Those lands were stolen from it, after all ^^

I don't trust this director at all and won't watch anyway.